Pripyat — the Uncanny of Modernity

Thursday, 22 March 2012, 9pm, Z-Bar

One year after the Fukushima disaster and 26 years after the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor, the discussion on civil nuclear energy has again reached the “normality” of planning for new power plants. Over the same time, Pripyat the destroyed young Sowjet city, now situated in Ukraine, has gained an eerie attraction. Firstly presented in Freiburg DE, the collected films allow a discussion of the human imagination triggered by nuclear energy and nuclear disasters beyond excited press news.

Presented by Klaus W. Eisenlohr. The film program comprises films representing visions of the abandoned city of Pripyat by artists and documentary filmmakers, and imaginations of futures under the influence of “peaceful nuclear energy”.

Artists list:
Hanne Adam + Thierry Buysse,
Klaus W. Eisenlohr,
Gair Dunlop,
Andrea Slavik,
Vanessa Renwick,
Anders Weberg,
Sarah Breen Lovett,
Nicky Larkin,
Julio Soto

More infos at: richfilm

Z-Bar
Bergstr. 2
D-10115 Berlin-Mitte

U-Rosenthaler Platz

Pripyat — the Uncanny of Modernity

Thursday, 22 March 2012
21:00
Z-Bar
Bergstr. 2
D-10115 Berlin-Mitte

U-Rosenthaler Platz

One year after the Fukushima disaster and 26 years after the explosion of the Chernobyl reactor, the discussion on civil nuclear energy has again reached the “normality” of planning for new power plants. Over the same time, Pripyat the destroyed young Sowjet city, now situated in Ukraine, has gained an eerie attraction. Firstly presented in Freiburg DE, the collected films allow a discussion of the human imagination triggered by nuclear energy and nuclear disasters beyond excited press news.

Presented by Klaus W. Eisenlohr. The film program comprises films representing visions of the abandoned city of Pripyat by artists and documentary filmmakers, and imaginations of futures under the influence of “peaceful nuclear energy”.

Artists list:
Hanne Adam + Thierry Buysse,
Klaus W. Eisenlohr,
Gair Dunlop,
Andrea Slavik,
Vanessa Renwick,
Anders Weberg,
Sarah Breen Lovett,
Nicky Larkin,
Julio Soto

More infos at:
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesPripyat2012.html

SCREENING CHERNOBYL 25 

Presented by Klaus W. Eisenlohr. The film program comprises films representing visions of the abandoned city of Pripyat by artists and documentary filmmakers, and imaginations of futures under the influence of “peaceful nuclear energy”.
Gair Dunlop confronts historical material about the glorious future that Dounreay Atomic Research Establishment would provide with his own camera footage, shot after the shut-down of the research power plant (Atom Town: Life After Technology). Now a ruin that still radiates, Dounreay does not attract nuclear tourists, unlike Chernobyl, which has become a popular destinations for photographers and other contemporary “explorers”. Julio Soto presents his imagination of cities after a climate or nuclear catastrophe in virtual images (Invisible Cities) just before he went to Pripyat himself in order to make a documentary about past and present inhabitants of the forbidden zone (Radiophobia). Vanessa Renwick in glorious pictures celebrates the good-bye to Trojan, a power-plant in the US that may be the equivalent to Brokdorf in Germany concerning the long-lasting local protests, but which was never going on-grid (Portrait #2: Trojan). And Thomas Bartels reflects in poetic pictures of 16mm film the mood of the year 1986, now almost a documentary of the mood in Germany under the influence of the clouds of Chernobyl (Zwischenlandung).

Chernobyl may have become the symbol for the crumbled future visions of modern prosperity made possible by peaceful nuclear energy, and for the apocalyptic imaginations of a modern catastrophe. However, it has also triggered an array of aspirations for adventures. Maybe less so the actual melted and broken reactor, shielded under a crumbling “sarcophagus” but the ghost town Pripyat, once a young modernist city, has become a collective iconographic symbol for the uncanny modernity that seems to attract people in many ways.

pripyat — the uncanny of modernity

Tuesday, 20 Sept 2011
19:30
Kommunales Kino Freiburg
Alter Wiehre Bahnhof
Urachstr. 40
79102 Freiburg im Breisgau

press links:

Program infos:
http://www.richfilm.de/filmUpload/1-framesPripyat.html
http://www.koki-freiburg.de/detail.php?fnr=3843

http://www.koki-freiburg.de/
http://www.directorslounge.net